HORSE RACING

HORSE RACING; Belmont Beckoning, but There's No Stampede

By JOSEPH DURSO,

Published: May 17, 1993

BALTIMORE, May 16—
The toll keeps mounting: Only 3 of the 12 horses who ran in the Preakness will definitely return for the Belmont Stakes, 3 others are interested but not yet committed and 6 won't be there. And the defectors include Personal Hope and Too Wild, both of whom showed pulmonary bleeding during the Preakness and will be sent home to heal.

At the most, only 4 of the 19 horses who started the Kentucky Derby two weeks ago will end up running in all three Triple Crown classics. And for the 15th straight year, no horse will sweep them.

Still, it didn't take long for Prairie Bayou to hit the campaign trail again after his rousing victory in the Preakness on Saturday. He boarded a van at Pimlico Race Course this morning and rolled north for the third and final race in the series, the Belmont Stakes on June 5. He has won 5 of his last 6 races and 7 of his last 10, and he can add even more luster to his growing image as the best 3-year-old horse in the country. Belmont Distance No Problem

"We'll give him a couple of days of rest at Belmont Park," said Tom Bohannan, chief trainer for the Loblolly Stable. "He earned it. Then we'll go back to work. It's a mile and a half in the Belmont Stakes, but I'm not concerned about the distance."

Prairie Bayou was not alone on Interstate 95 this morning. His chief rival, Sea Hero, who won the Kentucky Derby but ran fifth in the Preakness, also was en route to New York. So was the sharpest newcomer in the classics, Cherokee Run, who skipped the Derby but missed catching Prairie Bayou by only half a length in the Preakness.

The three colts were the only alumni of the Preakness who were committed today to finishing the series. Three others were listed as probable Belmont starters: El Bakan, from Panama, 18th in the Derby but third in the Preakness; Woods of Windsor, absent from the Derby, but sixth in the Preakness, and Wild Gale, third at Louisville and sixth at Pimlico. Disturbing Toll

But the high cost of campaigning was reflected again by the six other colts who started the Preakness.

Union City, the California star trained by D. Wayne Lukas, buckled during the run down the backstretch and shattered both sesamoid bones in his right front ankle. He was destroyed by injection about an hour later. Lukas, who had been mystified and disappointed when Union City ran 15th in the Derby, reacted with heat when asked about the colt's condition: "I never had a horse train as well as he did for the Derby. This injury was totally unrelated to the Derby. He galloped all week."

The two horses who showed signs of stress bleeding will go home and probably not return to racing until later this summer. It would be difficult for them to run in the Belmont, anyway, because New York bans all race-day medication like Lasix, the diuretic that is used to control bleeding. 'A Gutsy Horse'

Mark Hennig, the trainer of Personal Hope, who ran fourth in both the Derby and Preakness, said this morning:

"He bled bad yesterday. He's going to get a little time off, and we'll shoot for a later campaign. If he had ever bled before, I would have run him on Lasix. He's a gutsy horse. He was still digging in, trying to get past El Bakan for third. He also got jostled along the rail. He had paint all over his hip from being on the fence down the stretch."

Nick Zito, the trainer of Too Wild, who skipped the Derby and ran 11th in the Preakness, said: "Herb McCauley said he was starting to make a run, but the horse started climbing. That must have been when he started bleeding. We're going to regroup with him."

The other colts who will skip the Belmont are Rockamundo, who ran 17th and 7th in the two big races; Koluctoo Jimmy Al, who ran 10th in the Preakness, and Hegar, the late arrival from Florida, who crossed the wire in ninth place.

MacKenzie Miller, the trainer of the fallen hero, Sea Hero, offered no alibi for finishing fifth but said: "He didn't take to the track very well. The surface was drying out and getting loose. He never got hold of it. We'll go home and lick our wounds. We've got three weeks."